SYDNEY, Australia — It is an unusual sight for the famous but remote sandstone monolith known as Uluru: dense lines of eager climbers snaking up its reddish-brown surface, headed toward the peak of a rock sacred to the Indigenous Australians who live nearby.
Tourists are flocking to Uluru because, as of Oct. 26, they will be prohibited from scaling the 1,141-foot-tall rock, whose auburn ridges rise incongruously from the flat central Australia scrubland that surrounds them.
The ban is intended, in part, to prevent environmental damage to the monolith, which sits inside a national park that is a Unesco World Heritage site. But the rush of visitors in the time remaining is putting new strain on the park: Many hotels and campgrounds are sold out, leading to reports of increases in illegal camping, trespassing and trash dumping.
“It is very busy at the moment, and that is largely to do with the closure of the climb,” said Stephen Schwer, the chief executive of Tourism Central Australia. “Popularity has put stress on the existing infrastructure.”
Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, is a sacred site for the Indigenous Anangu people. For years, signs at the base have read “This is our home” and “Please don’t climb.”
In 2017, the board members of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park decided to turn that plea into an injunction, saying that climbing would be banned in two years.
In addition to the cultural and environmental issues, there were concerns about safety. More than 30 deaths have been recorded on Uluru, which has a steep, unguided climb. Visitors are welcome to trek around the base, as many choose to do instead. In recent decades, the number of Uluru climbers has declined.
But since the prohibition was announced, the number of people visiting the park has increased, and park staff members say more are climbing the rock than usual. More than 370,000 people visited in 2018, a gain of over 20 percent from the previous year. An increase in scheduled flights to the remote region has contributed to the tourist influx, Mr. Schwer said.
While most travelers are respectful, he said, he called the rise in destructive behavior such as lighting fires and littering “disappointing.” He urged people to plan and book ahead, as the increase in unregulated camping threatens the delicate desert ecosystem.
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Micha Gela, a group coordinator who has worked at the Outback Pioneer Hotel in the Ayers Rock Resort for more than four years, said that “it’s the busiest it’s been since I started.” Both the hotel and its campground, in which 2,700 people are currently pitching tents, are at capacity, she said.
Ms. Gela said some guests were angry about the imminent closing. “There was one guest who was complaining to us because his whole family climbs every year, and when the kids grow up they want them to go and climb,” she said.
“I’m Indigenous myself,” Ms. Gela added. “I don’t really approve of climbing. But obviously it’s a dream for them.”
Deborah Symons, a credit analyst from Brisbane, climbed Uluru with her husband in June and trekked the base with an Indigenous guide. She said the decision to close the rock to climbing “probably triggered our momentum to plan the trip.”
“It was always something we wanted to do, and we do not believe climbing the rock undermined any cultural or spiritual beliefs of the local Indigenous people,” she said.
Uluru has a long history as a spiritually, culturally and politically significant site for Australia’s Aboriginal people, especially the region’s Anangu people.
“It is an extremely important place, not a playground or theme park like Disneyland,” Sammy Wilson, chairman of the park’s board of management, said in a 2017 statement before the ban was approved. “We want you to come, hear us and learn.”
The Oct. 26 date will represent 34 years since Uluru was handed back to the traditional Anangu owners.
In 2017, a group of Indigenous leaders assembled at the rock to present the Uluru Statement From the Heart, a manifesto calling for a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to Parliament. On Wednesday, the Australian government announced that it would hold a referendum on constitutional recognition within three years.
Mr. Schwer, the tourism official, said he expected the high rates of visits to Uluru to continue after the Oct. 26 ban, saying many hotels were already near capacity for the months afterward.
Until the prohibition comes into effect, he asked that people reconsider the climb. “There are so many other ways people can feel the spiritual impact of the rock without climbing it,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/world/australia/uluru-climbing-ban.html
2019-07-11 10:17:28Z
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